


Underlying Doubts

by writingfromdarkplaces



Series: Dangerous Memories [1]
Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Repressed Memories, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 19:58:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7545921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingfromdarkplaces/pseuds/writingfromdarkplaces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lee used Zak's death as a shield, a way to explain the anger, the resentment, the doubt and even the fear that separated him from his father. If he blamed the old man for killing his brother, he didn't have to think about any other reasons for those feelings. It was all neatly explained by his father's absence and the loss of his brother. In his waking moments, he was convinced of it.</p><p>In his dreams, he wasn't. He never saw a face, but he remembered a colonial uniform. And pain. If he held onto any of the fragments of that dream, he always had to ask. <em>Dad, was it you? Were you the one that hurt me?</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Underlying Doubts

**Author's Note:**

> This bit of... something rose in my mind when I found myself drawn back into a show and characters I thought I'd given up on years ago. The show, maybe, but the characters... maybe not. Why it felt the need to manifest itself in this form, I don't know, but I've given up on trying to understand why my mind goes where it goes. I just know that the idea came into my head that maybe there was more to Lee's conflict with his father than what was seen or implied, and that evolved, eventually, into this, which I wrote to get it out of my head and system and... I don't even know why that meant it needed to be shared. 
> 
> This started with the idea that if perhaps in addition to his mother's mood swings there was someone she allowed into her life and her family's that shouldn't have been trusted, and that could have been why Lee was so angry with his father. It went from that to this, where he didn't know for sure who it was and feared it being his father. It was supposed to be one scene that covered the idea and let it go, but it turned into more. Strangely, though, this unpleasant theory makes a bunch of canon make more sense. That's what's really scary about it all.
> 
> And I don't have a specific setting for this. It almost has to be AU, but as I said, it could fit canon in a way, which says probably post Resurrection Ship, since Lee was a mess then, but it doesn't have to be. I tend to ignore most of the show past Flight of the Phoenix anyway.

* * *

The worlds had ended, Kara had confessed her sins, and he should have been able to forgive his father. Somehow he'd managed it with her, even if he should have done something about her admission. Hitting the punching bag in the gym might have been his first step, if there wasn't one Cylon attack after another to deal with, and by the time that cycle of thirty-three minute hell was over, he had a new demon to worry about.

The _Olympic Carrier._

That somehow outweighed the past, pushing aside the old wounds of Zak and even the attacks. He could only focus on one crisis at a time, it seemed, and when the one took over, he almost welcomed it.

Then his father shut him down when he tried to talk about it, and he was suddenly back to the original problem, the one lying under his skin and trying to bubble up after so many days without sleep and worse. And, like always, it stayed. It lingered, underneath everything, waiting for its time to torment him.

He couldn't call it a nightmare, because it felt like more. He wondered—feared—that it was a memory, especially since no one ever accused him of having much of an imagination.

_The fabric is familiar. He knows it now, and he knew it then, the unmistakable feel of a Colonial Fleet uniform. His hands are tangled in it, twisted up, and he's not sure why he's grasping it at first. He thinks of the way Zak clings to their father when he's trying to leave again, but it's not the same. Zak wraps onto one leg to try and stop him. Lee is clinging to two legs, and if he lets go, he might fall._

_Because he can't breathe._

_He's choking, and his throat hurts. He tries to look up, but something has him by the hair and he can't move._

Lee jerked, his breath coming in harsh, desperate gasps, like he was trying to make up for that moment when he couldn't get free, but even as he thought it, he swore. No. That was not real. None of it was. He didn't know why that image always tried to surface when he was at his worst, but he refused to let it get to him again.

He would breathe, calm himself, and get back to work. Business as usual.

“Something bothering you, Captain Apollo?”

Lee tensed. He hadn't had an incident like that in the middle of a briefing in years. The last time—frak, that was in the academy. Some guest speaker had been droning on, and for some reason Lee went there. No, not there. To the other one.

He forced himself to reach for his pen, picking it up and clicking it on, not liking the way his hand shook as he did. He needed a distraction and a focus, something to keep his mind from going to the other memory, a different side of that horrible coin.

They weren't even real, couldn't be real, and he didn't know why he couldn't make himself stop dredging them up. None of it was real.

“Lee?” This time it was his father who spoke, and who would have thought that would have been that straw, the one that broke the camel's back?

He fled the room without a word.

* * *

“I heard you had a bad day today.”

“Don't ask.”

Kara ignored him, sitting down next to him and nudging him with her elbow. “What happened?”

“I said don't ask.”

She rolled her eyes. “Who do you think you're talking to? Since when have I ever done what you told me to do? And why would resist an opportunity like this? Oh, sure, I can tease you any day, all day, without even trying, but when it comes to something golden like you flipping out in the middle of a briefing with your father and the president—”

“Go away.”

She dropped any pretense of teasing, and when she did, he knew it was bad. “Seriously, the whole ship knows. Half of them are looking for you. Whatever went down in there—”

“It's nothing.”

She shook her head. “The frak it is. I know you. I know you don't just bolt from meetings unless there is an alert and Cylons are on our ass. Maybe if one of your pilots is in trouble, but none of that happened today. You know it, and I know it. Today's one of the rare days. The peaceful ones. Which just takes me back to... why would you freak out like that when all is quiet?”

“Kara—”

“Only I already know the answer to that, don't I? You bottle it up, bottle up every little frakking thing and you make yourself think you're handling it until right in the middle of nowhere you just up and snap. Sometimes you see it coming—like with your dad or with me—and gods know you need those moments of release, but this wasn't like that,” she said. She wrinkled her nose, making a ridiculous face. “Lords, listen to me. I sound like the damned headshrinkers. I hate those frakkers.”

“Me, too,” Lee said, eyes on his hands. He hated how they always poked at his issues with his father, coming too close to the things he didn't want to talk about even if he let them have the stuff on the surface. Wasn't him abandoning them enough? The divorce. Him never being there for any of the important events in their lives? For his mother's mood swings and her drinking and the strange men he'd sometimes run into when he was trying to keep them all from going under when his dad left? That was plenty. Why did they always want more?

“Lee?”

“It's nothing.”

She hit him. “The frak it is. It's not nothing when you're like this. I can see that for myself, and there are times when I won't call you on it, but I always know.”

“It _is_ nothing. It _has_ to be nothing,” he insisted. “If it's not nothing, then it was Dad, and if it was Dad, then—”

Horrified, he stopped himself and pushed away from her, needing to get distance and clear his head. He didn't understand. He _never_ talked about those moments, not with anyone. Not his friends, not his mother—gods, why would he?—not Zak, and not... not his father.

What was wrong with him? He didn't do this. Yes, Kara was right about how he bottled things up and kept them down, but he kept them down. Those memories got out every now and again, more so since the attacks, but he'd had enough close calls and near death experiences in the past few months to confuse anyone else who might think he had something to hide. He didn't. They knew what his demons were. Or they thought they did.

“What the frak are you talking about?” Kara demanded as she caught up to him, taking hold of his arm. “You—you're making it sound like your father did something horrible, and while I know you hated him for Zak's death, you never—it wasn't like that back there. It was different. I'm not sure I can say why, but it is.”

It was, and Lee knew it was, but that didn't change anything. “I'm not talking about it. Leave it alone, leave me alone, and just forget it. Because I will not ever discuss it.”

“You know that's not going to work. Your father's going to want an explanation. The president will want one. And I damn well do, and you know how I can get, and if you don't tell me—”

“I won't.” He wouldn't tell anyone. Couldn't. Even if he wanted to, which was unlikely, he already knew that if he did, if he let even the suspicion—the one that drove him crazy sometimes when he let himself think about it so he didn't let himself think about it—people would start to doubt his father.

Just like he did.

Sometimes.

More often than he wanted to admit.

* * *

Lee was on his third bottle of the chief's brew when she managed to find him a second time.

At that point, he wasn't all that keen on anything except finding oblivion and purging the images from his head, neither of which was working. He only had two fragments. They shouldn't be able to tie him up in knots like this. He knew better than that.

Why not be haunted by his brother's death?

By one of the times he'd thought his mother was going to die she'd drank that much?

By the worlds ending.

By the _Olympic Carrier._

Or any of the other deaths and loss, the pilots under his command or civilians, all of them and more, or every bit of pain, all the scars he carried since the war began.

Not this. Not some snippet of a moment that he didn't even know was real. He couldn't ever see a face, couldn't tell how old he was at either time—still a kid, since he'd seen his hands in both fragments, saw them and knew that he had felt small and helpless, unable to stop what was happening—but that wasn't enough. He didn't know that it was real—he didn't know why he'd imagine something like that, but it didn't make it wrong, either.

He didn't know what it was.

He just knew, when he allowed himself to think about it, that he only remembered one man in his mother's life that wore a uniform.

His father.

His mother blamed the Fleet for the whole thing, so why would she have another officer in the house? And his father's friendship with Tigh had never brought that man to the house, not any of his father's other friends, either, not that Lee remembered—gods, it would be almost easier to bear if he thought it was someone his mother found while she was drunk. Only he couldn't see her ever bringing one home, not when she hated what that uniform represented.

Which left him with his father.

And drove Lee straight back into the bottle.

“Tell me,” Kara said, blocking him from taking another sip. “You're not going to get away without saying something. If not to me then to your father. Or maybe the entire frakking battlestar because the CAG hasn't shown up for duty in two days.”

“It hasn't been that long.”

“Yes, it has. And you're on the verge of losing your career along with all respect the pilots and the fleet had for you. You're not like this. I have never seen you walk away from a duty before, but this time you not only walked away, you ran and hid and you did it with—well, with skill, which pisses me off but you know you can't do this. You have to find a way to get your head back on straight. Or I am going to beat the hell out of you, but gods, don't make me do that. That's not just kicking a guy when he's down.”

Lee looked at her. “You wouldn't win.”

“You are so drunk right now it would be easy.”

“Too drunk to feel, which is what I want. What I need,” Lee whispered. He tried not to shudder as the other memory tried to assert itself again. “Gods, just make it _stop.”_

“Lee—”

“If I tell you, you'll hate me. No, him. No, me. I...” Lee shook his head before forcing himself up to his feet. “I need to puke.”

“The head's the other direction.”

He didn't even manage to glare at her before passing out.

* * *

When Lee came to, he was in his father's quarters and the old man was watching him.

Grimacing, he tried to sit up but couldn't.

“I should throw you in the brig, take your commission, and make damn sure you never fly again,” his father began. Lee met his gaze, knowing that the commander was talking, and if the commander was talking, that really said it all, didn't it?

“You should,” Lee agreed. He was too tired and too hungover not to, and from the way the images kept replaying in his head, he was in no condition to be in the air and he knew it. He couldn't deny it.

“Lee,” his father said, voice softening as his eyes crinkled with something that made Lee's stomach turn. He bolted for the head and didn't make it, losing his stomach just outside it. He sat back with a moan, and while a part of him wanted his father to help him, when Adama got closer, Lee panicked and hit the wall.

“Frak,” he muttered, wishing that it would stop.

“I could take the hard line with you,” his father said. “Send you to the brig. Keep you there until your head cleared and you were—”

“My head is not going to clear,” Lee almost spat. “It hasn't in over twenty years. Or something like that. Gods, I don't even know. I can't—it's never clear. Never more than one—two—fragments, and it's driving me crazy.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm not talking.”

_The hand over his mouth is clamped down hard enough to where it is going to break his jaw, and he hears himself whimper behind it, unable to get that hand off or any of the rest of him free. A heavy weight is crushing him, and he pushes against regulation tanks trying to get free. The pain stabs him again, and he's screaming against the hand, but it does no good. This is happening. He can't stop it._

“Lee? Lee, answer me godsdamn it,” his father said, shaking him, and Lee screamed, shoving him away as he tried to get clear, but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to maneuver.

“Was it you?” Lee choked out, looking up at his father and trying to understand. “Was it?”

“I don't know what you're talking about. Was what me?”

“You'd know,” Lee whispered. “If it was you, you'd know.”

His father frowned, and Lee tried to get up again, but his father touched him, and he smacked the wall for a third time, this time harder than the last two. He put a hand to his head and moaned, trying to get his body under control before he ended up puking again.

“Tell me.”

Lee didn't know if it was his father or the commander talking, and he didn't know that he cared or that he could control any of it anymore. “I have... two pieces. Just... flashes, never the whole thing, never anything new.”

“Flashes of what?”

“Dad,” Lee begins, but the word turned his stomach and he lost it again, throwing up over everything. He curled up into himself, trying to stop the memories. He needed to be free of this, all of this. He felt sick, and he didn't want to be here. He couldn't move. All he could do was the same stupid thing he'd done since the first time he'd had the memory surface—he replayed the moment over and over, trying to get more, to get the answers that never came.

A man in a Fleet uniform. That's all he knew for certain. That man had hurt him. He'd been a child, unable to stop it, but maybe he was imagining the whole thing. 

“Lee, look at me,” his father said, lifting his chin so that he was able to see his face. “Listen to me. That man, whoever the frak he was—that was not me, damn it. I know I wasn't always the father you needed or the one you wanted or deserved, but that was not me. I never once laid a hand on you, though I'll admit, there were times I wanted to—Zak's funeral, those things you said—but even then... Even when I thought you deserved it—no. Gods, no.”

Lee closed his eyes and lowered his head. He wanted to believe it. He did.

He didn't.

Couldn't.


End file.
